‘Carter and the End’ gets apocalyptic at Swampfest

From left to right Kiki Griffin and Charlotte Geissler the co-writers and cinematographer director of Carter and the End Photo by Fabian Ceron Making a movie is hard enough in a controlled setting Making one in armageddon-inspired chaos That s another story That s exactly what filmmakers Charlotte Geissler and Kiki Griffin aimed to do with Carter and the End a fictional story that takes place within the boundaries of a real-world event The film was shot at Swampfest a Florida festival that celebrates the world of BMX and skateboarding During the film Carter Bass the film s lead actor interacts with real festival-goers in character treating the festival as an end-of-the-world celebration Geissler who is originally from Germany linked up with her now creative partner Griffin while working in Berlin When the two identified themselves living in Atlanta at the same time they started making movies together Bass and Griffin have known each other longer having grown up together in Athens Bass has long been interested in skateboarding he s in the process of building a skatepark in his own backyard according to Griffin and his love for the activity is what initially caused the women to think about filming a movie down at Swampfest If you look Swampfest up there are just the the bulk insane videos of people running through rings of fire running down giant monster trucks Griffin reported That instantly captivated us to go down there From left to right Charlotte Geissler and Kiki Griffin in front of Swampfest Photo by Fabian Ceron Heading into the chaos of Swampfest Geissler and Griffin struggled with how to tackle the film According to the filmmakers they knew that a separate documentary crew would also be at the festival so they didn t want to take a straight nonfiction approach On the other hand they thought doing something fully scripted would be too hard The decision to blend documentary and fiction came to them as a way to make things a little easier on themselves and to make the film unique We got together and wrote a script for it that had various lines that the main actor Carter Bass was supposed to follow Geissler noted But a lot of it was like this is what he should say or something around these lines you know It was a complete experiment going down there and seeing how it would work Bass had never acted in a movie before so the improvisational approach allowed him to more naturally fit into his role That in turn made everything feel a little more real During one scene which involves a dream sequence where Bass character imagines himself getting married festival goers thought that an actual Swampfest-style wedding was about to unfold According to Geissler various crew members from the other documentary film that was on the scene even came over to figure out what was going on It created this really special atmosphere where the real people around us that we were filming thought that what we were filming was real Geissler declared That really came together in this wedding scene But while chaos can conjure particular good surprises it also comes with challenges For the crew of Carter and the End that primary challenge was variability and making sure that everyone came out alive A still from the film Carter and the End of Carter Bass and Charlotte Geissler on a motorcycle Photo by Kiki Griffin We are coming into a scenario where we are absolutely unsure of what s happening Griffin announced You know within the first minutes our main subject was knocked out cold in the skate bowl and had to be lifted out on a gurney You read that right On day one of the shoot several of the crew members walked over to a nearby gas station to stock up on supplies When they came back Bass was on a gurney swarmed by medics According to Griffin he skated into the bowl at the exact same time as a BMX rider and the two collided at the bottom of the curved basin The BMX rider s helmet hit Bass in the face causing him to black out Bass ended up being fine but it was a scary way to start out the weekend If there s anybody that can keep going it s Carter Bass Griffin reported Griffin served as the cinematographer for Carter and the End and shot the film on her personal Sony FX camera She called the FX a perfect run and gun camera lightweight good for shooting at night and easy to work with even when you re on your feet all day It s also a tank Griffin mentioned I trust it to be able to go into the middle of a mosh pit and take a swing or two and come out just fine The filmmaking band is in the post-production stages and hopes to have a final cut ready by this summer Griffin and Geissler also want to include other multimedia elements in the film such as camcorder footage and photographs taken by Fabian Ceron The filmmakers have also thought about trying to incorporate stop motion or a few type of animation to help beef up anything they might not have been able to capture during the three-day shoot Griffin reported she also hopes to get usable footage from various of the attendees she met while down at the festival Various festival-goers were getting up-close footage of different stake tricks and falls which Griffin hopes would add to the collaborative spirit of the film I think that the collaborative effort is really beautiful because it s such a compact event where there s so much happening at the same time she announced Hopefully having these other people that craved to unit up with us is going to be able to help push the visual forward The post Carter and the End gets apocalyptic at Swampfest appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta